[re_tail20]

(End of article proposals - Fodder for discussion)

1. Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;

2. Provide ongoing, examples-based training and simulations. Not only telling but showing police officers how they are expected to behave and react is critical;

3. Require community involvement from police officers so they know the districts and the individuals they are policing. This will encourage empathy and understanding;

4. Enforce the laws against everyone, including police officers. When police officers do wrong, use those individuals as examples of what not to do – so that others know that this behavior will not be tolerated. And tell the police unions and detective endowment associations they need to keep their noses out of the justice system;

5. Support the good guys. Honest cops who tell the truth and behave in exemplary fashion should be honored, promoted and held up as strong positive examples of what it means to be a cop;

6. Last but not least, police cannot police themselves. Develop permanent, independent boards to review incidents of police corruption and brutality—and then fund them well and support them publicly. Only this can change a culture that has existed since the beginnings of the modern police department.

[JimRed]

Develop permanent, independent boards to review incidents of police corruption and brutality—and then fund them well and support them publicly.

And in blue cities and states the review boards will be loaded with cop-hating liberals; the cop will always be in the wrong. How do we prevent that?

[Calvin Locke]

Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits.

"It's not fair to discriminate based on lack of skills/intelligence/competence/honesty/ability to do the job/..." - ACLU

[God luvs America]

“1. Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;”

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versus lets continue to have more quota hires???

[556x45]

‘4. Enforce the laws against everyone, including police officers.’

LOL!

[AnotherUnixGeek]

1. Strengthen the selection process and psychological screening process for police recruits. Police departments are simply a microcosm of the greater society. If your screening standards encourage corrupt and forceful tendencies, you will end up with a larger concentration of these types of individuals;

To all of these sensible guidelines you've suggested, I'd add one more - require on-duty law enforcement to wear some sort of video recording equipment to record in a loop the last 30 minutes of whatever the officer does on duty. It would protect innocent police officers who must fire their weapons or use other violence in the line of duty from politicized charges, and it would protect citizens from the excesses of the (hopefully) few law enforcement officers who decide to abuse their authority.

If the officer in Missouri had been wearing such a device, there could be no differing viewpoints and no conflicting expert testimony on the Mike Brown shooting.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I don’t disagree with any of his six points.
Particularly the one about strengthening the selection process.

And to attract quality candidates you need to offer decent starting pay. It always scares me when municipalities post job openings for police officers where the starting pay is approximately what an Assistant Manager at Walmart makes.